linux-kernel - [RFC] Detecting missing null pointer checks after memory allocations

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Message-ID: <52e58416-d75f-4a47-9555-88a99d664069@web.de>
Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2025 13:42:56 +0100
From: Markus Elfring <Markus.Elfring@....de>
To: cocci@...ia.fr, kernel-janitors@...r.kernel.org
Cc: LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-xfs@...r.kernel.org
Subject: [RFC] Detecting missing null pointer checks after memory allocations

Hello,

I got into the mood to try another simple source code search out which
can be achieved also by the means of the semantic patch language.

@display@
expression size, source, target;
@@
 target =
(
*kmalloc
|
*vmalloc
|
*malloc
)(...);
 memcpy(target, source, size);

It can be determined then from the generated diff file that mentioned
implementation details can be found at 11 places (4 source files) of
the software “Linux next-20251031”.
Will such analysis information trigger further collateral evolution?

Regards,
Markus